The Rom-Commers(63)

Ah. He’d thought I was having a medical emergency.

Oops.

“Nothing like that,” I said, waving my hands to help him regroup. “It’s just got my screenplay in it.”

Charlie coughed at that. “Your what?”

“My mermaid screenplay.”

He shook his head. “That’s your emergency?”

“Yeah.” I pulled the zipper and yanked it out.

“I thought you were…” Charlie said, still breathing hard. “Hurt or sick or something.”

At the thought of that, Charlie coughed some more.

“Shh,” I said, glancing Donna Cole’s way. “What is it with you and the coughing?”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Charlie said.

“It feels performative.”

“This from the woman who just made me abandon my meeting to sprint over here.”

That felt oddly touching. “You abandoned your meeting?”

“I thought you were dying. I was picturing you like a fish flopping around on dry land.”

I tilted my head, like Odd visual. Then I said, “I’m fine.”

“Clearly.”

I glanced Donna Cole’s way again. I could explain all this later. Then, real quick: “How do I look?”

Charlie shifted from puzzled to baffled. “How do you look?”

I patted around on my head. “Is everything—battened down? Pom-pom all in order?”

“You look,” Charlie started, and then he reached out to tuck a little curlicue behind my ear before finishing with “lovely, actually.”

“I will settle for not crazy. But ‘lovely, actually’ works, too.”

I targeted the banquette like an action hero. Time to do this.

“Thanks again so much, Charlie,” I said, and then, in my excitement, I accidentally bounced up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek—only realizing halfway across the café that it might not’ve been appropriate. “Sorry,” I called back then, giving him a scratch that wave as he stood blinking after me. “That was an accident.”

And then I rounded the corner and landed smack in the legendary presence of Donna Cole—and a table of industry people. When had all these other folks showed up? The memory’s a bit of a blur, but Katie Palmer was there. And that girl who starred in that thing about the trapeze artist. And that actress who always played the wisecracking best friend in everything. Dammit—what was her name? I loved her!

That’s when I noticed, nestled in among them, of all people: T.J. Heywood. Backward baseball cap and all.

How dare he sit at a table with my favorite director?

Something about the sight of him with his big dude-bro energy smacked me with reality like a board.

Oh, shit.

This was not some fantasy version of my life. T.J. Heywood could never even get a bit part in that. This had to be reality—where T.J. got to go wherever he wanted.

What could this group possibly be meeting about? Making an all-female, beach-bikini Beer Tower III?

No. Donna Cole would never let that happen.

One thing was clear, though. These people were all really here. At a table together. A table that T.J. Heywood had clearance to join. And I did not.

I froze.

Miscalculation.

I want to point out that, with the exception of T.J.’s hat, no one here was doing anything wrong. These people were just having coffee.

I was the one in the wrong.

In that moment, I switched sides.

All the glee I’d been feeling one second before just disappeared into the realization that, yes, Donna Cole was here in this café, and yes, I was also here in this café—but I had zero actual reason to talk to her. She had no idea who I was—nor would she care if she did—and, like everyone else at the table, had no interest in being accosted by a sad and desperate writer.

Ugh. Who did that pathetic writer think she was?

Wasn’t there a famous story of a nine-months-pregnant Amy Poehler falling asleep on the subway and waking up to an unsolicited screenplay teetering on her belly?

Oh, god. Was I that subway person?

I couldn’t be that subway person.

But I couldn’t let Donna Cole just walk out of my life, either.

There was an awkward grace period while the whole table ignored the figure standing cringily beside them with a screenplay in her hand. A moment when I should have spun a 180 on my heel and escaped.

But this is true: my feet couldn’t move. It was like they’d been soldered to the floor with a blowtorch.

Then, the grace period expired. The conversation stopped. And this veritable party bus of Hollywood royalty all just turned my way and waited, like a silent chorus of Who the hell are you?

A burning humiliation that started at my feet filled my body. My clothes felt hot. My collar got damp.

Time to say something—anything.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” I said.

Then I faltered as I caught a fleeting glimpse of Donna Cole’s expression, perhaps best described as: Seriously? What the hell? And I saw Katie Palmer with a similar one. And then I saw T.J. indulge in a little triumphant smile, anticipating how satisfyingly this moment was going to confirm every mean thought he had.

No way out but through. I pushed on. “I just wanted to…”